A letter to the Bozeman city attorney

I e-mailed this to city attorney Greg Sullivan a few minutes ago. I post it here in the hopes that others will send similar e-mails questioning the City of Bozeman's policy of asking for social networking passwords on a waiver for city job applicants' criminal background checks. I also sent it to the local newspaper and television station.

Mr. Sullivan,

I watched the KBZK news story about the city's hiring practices, especially the criminal background check. I'm concerned that asking potential employees for their Web passwords and usernames is an illegal violation of privacy, and I hope you'll answer a few questions about the policy.

1. When was the policy enacted? In other words, exactly when did the city begin asking potential employees for their passwords?
2. Do all potential employees fill out the criminal background check waiver, or only employees who have been provisionally offered a job?
3. If all employees must fill out the background check waiver, then what happens to the paperwork for the applicants who later do not become city employees? That is to say, how many people have given the city their account names and passwords who did not later get a job with the city? Are their records protected in secure files, as you say the city employees' records are? Are they shredded, burned, otherwise destroyed?
4. What impact does it have on a person's chances of obtaining a city job if that person refuses to fill out that portion of the background check waiver, citing privacy principles? Must a potential employee fill that section out in order to be considered for employment?
5. What happens if it is discovered that a person lied on that application and listed no Web accounts when, in reality, that person had accounts?
6. For the people hired to the city before this became a policy: If those people have Facebook accounts or other similar Web service accounts, have they been asked to submit their passwords and usernames to the city to keep on file? Or are those people permitted to have social media accounts without city oversight?
7. Exactly who gets to see an applicant's private Web data? Names and titles would be nice to have.
8. Explain how it can possibly be fair for a person to place trust in city employees and give passwords to their personal Web accounts when the applicant is clearly not trusted to be an adult on those sites? In other words, what makes the city employees fair judges of acceptable behavior on social networking sites?
9. Have city employees been trained in privacy matters and sensitivity issues when it comes to social networking sites? If training has been done, who did the training, and exactly which city employees received that training. How much did any such training cost the city?
10. Have city employees been trained to navigate and use every single social networking site that an applicant could list on that waiver, or will the employees be bumbling around in sites they have never heard of before?
11. How much time does a city employee on a hiring committee spend on each social networking site listed by the applicant? Hours? Minutes?
12. Is providing such information on the waiver required?
13. As the KBZK reporter pointed out to you, the state constitution grants Montanans a right to privacy unless the state can show a compelling interest to overcome that right. Please explain why this policy constitutes a "compelling state interest."
14. Finally, you said several times in the KBZK interview that the city looks for "very specific information" (you used that wording twice) about applicants. Please list the specific things you look for on those sites. If you have a rubric for determining a person's trustworthiness, moral character or otherwise acceptability, please attach it to your response.

As a concerned citizen of Bozeman, I hope that you'll take the time to respond to each of these questions and attach any relevant links, memos, or legal documents explaining this policy.

-Michael Becker

Related posts:

1. UPDATED City of Bozeman asks for online passwords for job applicant background checks
2. Late afternoon Bozeman fiasco update
3. E-mails to the city of Bozeman
4. Bozeman backtracks on privacy matters
5. Police officer’s Facebook postings part of lawsuit against City of Bozeman